The Crowded Shortcut of SEO Tricks

SEO tricks are like sales tricks!

Delivering value and earning trust for your company and on your website circumvents the need for any SEO techniques and any dodgy sales techniques. Optimising your site for content, like selling a good product or service, should not require a trick. There are clearly some things you shouldn't do, or neglect to do, like considering the audience you're after, writing content that will resonate with that audience, and publishing it in a way that best extols the virtues of your delivery medium (the Internet - and Google)

It seems, there is a fine line between extolling the virtual of Google's search algorithm and attempting to play it. I read the other day that "the perfect subject line for an email, and the perfect title for a blog post, take the form:
Odd Number - Adjective - Verb / Adverb - Emotional Outcome "

I actually heard this advice this past week. It seems to be true too - or at least many people believe it - so many blog posts you see have this, or a very close derivation of, this formula. Although you must wonder I guess, which came first? The Internet is flooded with this vacuous content that makes it's way to our inboxes and browsers every day.

But something strikes me as wrong about these techniques, both the click bait, blog post heading, email subject line, and equivalent manipulative sales techniques employed by cold calling pundits. They are all geared around coercing or manipulating an innocent party in a unsolicited conversation to do something they didn't ask to do.

Does there need to be a secret to driving huge web traffic? Do you even need huge web traffic, or do you just need to right people to find you. If selling 70 copies of a product ensures a good financial year, surely there are better ways to find 70 great leads, than by generating 10,000 "nibbles". Maybe I'm naive. Seth Godin would say, build a remarkable product, and then allow all those remarks to drive "interest" your way. And he should know. I don't see pithy, click bait headlines or any semblance of a social media presence from him, but Google "Seth" and see what happens. Surely this goes to show, that like most things, there's a right way, that is foolproof but hard, or a "short cut" that every other person is on, crowding things up to the point where the short cut, doesn't end up getting you there at all...not such an attractive short cut anymore.

[caption id="attachment_42" align="aligncenter" width="464"] SEO Tricks are becoming like a short cut, so crowded, that it's not short anymore[/caption]

But then there's the scenario where you're talking to someone you are stating your case with permission. Recruiting, replying to s call, presenting.... This is sales too right? There will be times when those techniques (tricks) for countering objections are useful, but surely it's your message that is important, and if you have permission to communicate your message, go for it, with all the tactics and techniques you can muster, but it's permission first, techniques later.